Participate in a sporting comp or corporate event and you’ll often receive a shirt to prove it. And if that shirt comes from Bigfish Gear, no one is going to miss you, such is the vibrancy of the gear designed and made in the Top End by graphic designer Josh Ker and his 16-strong team.

An avid angler, Josh began producing his custom artwork fishing shirts as a side hustle in 2008.

“I was managing a print company at the time and we had a couple of orders to have shirts dye sublimated or digitally printed for fishing competitions,” he explains.

Back then, the standard fishing shirt was a conservative, two-pocket button-up affair, but Josh, with his eye for design, saw an opportunity to do things differently and earn some extra income.

“I thought, this is pretty similar to what I do nine to five,” he says. “If you think of a shirt as panels – sleeves, bodies, fronts, backs – you’re basically just applying artwork to a panel or poster.”

When locals learnt Josh and Natalie were thinking of setting up shop, the orders started flowing in.

“There was a fishing lure brand, a couple of tournaments coming up, an air-conditioning mob… suddenly we had something like 2,000 shirts on order and we’d never even made one!” Josh says. “I was looking at doing something on the weekend or after hours, but, at that point, I had to make a decision pretty quickly about where things were going to go.”

Where things have gone in the intervening 16 years is extraordinarily well. Today, Bigfish Gear makes around 1,000 premium-quality shirts a week, all proudly designed, printed and stitched in its Darwin factory.

Around half are sold under the company’s own label, in local fishing and speciality stores around Australia, and in Singapore, Abu Dhabi, Zambia and the US, with the remainder going to commercial work for events, brands and clubs.

Scaling up has entailed ongoing investment in big ticket production technology – wide-format printers and heat presses, laser cutters and industrial sewing machines and button stitchers.

Turning a startup into a sustainable commercial enterprise in a city where factories are rare has not been without its challenges, Josh admits.

“Being remote, we didn’t have a lot of people around who could help us solve problems with machinery or processes in the early days,” he says. “We’ve had to figure out the most economical and efficient production methods for ourselves.”

As operations have expanded, Bigfish has moved into larger premises in the Darwin suburb of Berrimah.

NAB Senior Business Banking Manager Rae Lamb says smart management has enabled the business to overcome some of the hurdles associated with running a manufacturing enterprise in the Northern Territory.

“Logistically, we’re a long way from anywhere, our power is expensive and we’ve always had labour shortages – the population can be transient and attracting and retaining staff is hard,” Lamb notes. “Being super passionate about what they do and, with NAB’s support, investing in the automation of their processes has helped Bigfish find a way to survive and thrive.”